I know this is a long shot, but does anyone know if it is possible to actually alter the data of a PS2 game? I run a fun little thing called DBZ League on youtube using Budokai Tenkaichi 3. We have 16 teams of 5 players competing against each other com vs com. The fans get to control the custom builds of the players, but there is a problem. Some characters only have three health bars while others have four. This forces us to limit our customization options since we have to spend points to get everyone up to 4 health bars.

What I am wondering is if there is a way to get into the game iso and change it so that everyone starts with the same health. I know that it is possible in PC games, but that PS2 is a whole other monster. I looked around online for an answer but I found nothing. I don't mind learning how to do it myself, but I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction (assuming there is even a direction to go in)

It's very easy, I didn't added anything like that to my cheats nor trainer/editor for this game only couse I like characters to be different and concentrated my modding on different stuff like transformations etc;p, the game stores all character hp around 205xxxxx or soo, sorted out by their ID's(quite different from how they show in menu's through;p). Once you change that it'll stay that way untill you restart the game and all game modes will keep those customized settings. I might look for an aob to easily find that list with cheat engine, should have it somewhere couse I listed all characters ID's already.

Edit:
Ok I assume you know what's "Cheat Engine"? If not google and download it, then run and attach to pcsx2.
Set search range for 20400000-20600000 select value type as Array of Bytes(aob in short;p) and search for this:

Code:

40 9C 00 00 40 9C 00 00 A0 86 01 00 06 00 00 00

first result will be first character,
first 8 bytes are starting hp/max hp
soo 40 9C 00 00 = (remember to invert bytes;p) 0x9c40 and that is 40000 this is starting hp for first char on the list. Now I'm not 100% sure now if that is sorted by character ID or by it's apperance on the game(most likely by ID), but for your needs you'll just want to copy that(or other) line and paste it to all lower ones or easier make a condensed code to use with pnach

For different game version, just change the 40562D80 for the first adress you find with cheat engine(but replace the first number 2 to 4) and the 40562D84 to 4 that adress + 4 bytes;p and change 00009C40 for any amount of HP you want. Edit: another step would be setting limit for blast bars as well;p added a code for that, just add 0x0C for the adress found from that aob to get the starting adress for that code and change 00000007 to how much blast bars you wish to limit all chars to, 7 should be max, couse none above have correct graphics and it'll probably just look bad.;p Anyway that's enough to make all characters same, but even if you disable that code it'll stay that way unless restarted, soo better make sure to not ruin your story mode gameplay by having it accidently on.

Another edit:
Oh and if you want to do that on PS2, you still can but each person will have to have it's own cheating method like codebreaker, armax, gameshark etc. using emulator is just soo much easier/cheaper for cheating;p.

OK... I understood about 10% of that since i have never messed with the games code, but I will find a way to learn! Now that I know it is possible, you may have made hundreds of people happy! I will look into this more and use what you wrote to guide me.

Quick question, this is something I would need to do every time I launch the emulator?

edit: another idea occurred to me. Would ti be easier to just change the number of customization points everyone has? Since everyone in the game has 7 points to spend, I thought it might just be one universal value instead of a value for each character. That way we can just increase the value by two to allow players with less health to use the health+ and still have 7pts

You can easily change customization points, but for example health potara doesn't really stack, soo you wouldn't get what you wanted. And about doing it each time - no. All I wrote above is how to create the code on your own and example made on PAL version since I had it under hand. Once you have the code in pnach file, pcsx2 will just read it automatically as long as you have cheats enabled.

I might just do pnach files for all 3 versions since maybe it's not soo easy for someone that never done any code before.

Just download which one you need and put inside "cheats" folder inside pcsx2 installation directory. Also the file name must be correct, soo run your game first and check PCSX2 log for a line which has your game CRC, example:

Now if your game CRC is different than the filename, you have to copy that number from pcsx2 log and edit the filename to look like it.
For example you have US version, soo you download file called 428113C2.pnach, but your game CRC after running the game would show for example 0x12345678 then you have to change the filename to 12345678.pnach, otherwise pcsx2 will not detect it.

Last, make sure you have cheats enabled in pcsx2 gui "System" menu, and refresh emulation state by restarting game, moving slider in pcsx2 log or saving(F1) and loading(F3) state and you'll see a new info in pcsx2 log that cheats were loaded. As long as you keep cheats enabled, and have the file with them correctly named in correct folder, it'll just load them automatically each time you run the game.

Maybe to late to come to the party here... but anyway, maybe god will see it and give me help.

I was trying to mod custom health bars to my characters, but I dont want all of them to have the same amount. I want strong characters to have 7 health bars or more and weaker ones the vanilla 4 or even less. I mean, something like Brolly having maybe 10 bars, Goku 7, Krillin 6 or 5, DB chars down to 3 or 4.

I downloaded the programs to edit PS2 roms, but I cant understand anything from that. Just a bunch of numbers and letters to me. How can I find chars ID and where their health is? I found tons of mods of BT3 in Youtube modding about everything, but no one shared a specific step-by-step tutorial...

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